


Readjusting

by daviesroyal



Series: Phoenix Rising [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Angel: the Series, Doctor Who, Grimm (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Teen Wolf (TV), Torchwood
Genre: Aftermath, Basically mentions of all the tags from the previous story, Growing Up, Healing, Multi, Snapshots, Which you should read if you want any of this to make sense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-05 10:33:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11576292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daviesroyal/pseuds/daviesroyal
Summary: Snippets of each Fyrebird's reaction when they return to their original time. Seriously, none of this will make any sense without the context of the rest of the series.





	1. 1982 (Donna)

Donna is the first one back. They all left at the same time, but since everyone went back to roughly the day they were taken, she’s the first one to return to her original time. Despite how long they’ve been gone  _ (and she knows it’s been years, at least, even if she can’t remember how many), _ they haven’t aged, don’t look any different physically, and it’s only the changes in their behaviour and minds and the dark fire in their eyes that show something happened.

Tony and Bella did the math, looked at all the research before they destroyed it, and said that once each ‘Fyrebird’  _ (and god, she hates that name, she doesn’t want any reminder of what they’ve been through, but everyone who knows what they did will call them that, and if she lets the Initiative cow her when they’re dead then she’s already lost) _ returned to the time they left they’d start aging normally again  _ (as much as any of them will ever be normal, the experiments changed their bodies and the training changed their minds and the assignments changed their souls) _ . They probably made copies, just so they had a resource if something started going wrong  _ (more wrong than a bunch of children being kidnapped to the future to be experimented on and turned into time-travelling assassins) _ with one of the ‘Fyrebirds’ and she doesn’t want any of her family to die so she looked the other way. 

She’s drowning in memories every second, her family isn’t here yet to anchor her, and she has no idea how she’ll make it two years until the Starks join her.


	2. 1984 (the Starks)

Tony and I rematerialize behind the moon, blocked from any detection on Earth. The stolen Phoenix ship, the last of its kind, just fits in the shadow of the satellite. Tony had tweaked it before we left, taking out the trackers and inhibitors and replacing them with temporal stabilizers and directional controls. He had to improvise with the space-time navigator, eventually just wiring telepathic circuits so we could navigate through the Vortex ourselves.

We teleported down to Earth, landing with barely a stumble just outside of campus. Dawn is creeping closer, blotting out the stars, but it’s the same night we were taken and no one should be the wiser. Pissed, maybe, if Rhodey or Jarvis have been trying to contact us, but they won’t ever know what we’ve been through.

I’m trying to figure out a cover story when Donna’s mind bursts along our link. It’s been seconds for us, two years for her, and I’m furious with myself. We should have seen this coming, should have sent someone back with her; we knew we wouldn’t age until we were back in our own timestream, but she still went home alone.

Tony and I wrap our own consciousness around Donna’s, feeling her relief and pain in equal measures. There’s no anger, which I’m pathetically grateful for, but the first emotions we got from her are telling: the eight of us are bound together, and two years is a terrifying amount of time to spend alone now. We can never let this happen again.

_We won’t,_ Tony whispers to both of us.  _We know better now. None of us will ever be alone again._

_Leave no man behind?_ I joke weakly.

_Oi,_ Donna protests.  _You tell this lot that, they’ll leave the two of us to fend for ourselves._

_Are you actually implying that you and Bella can’t take care of yourselves?_ Tony asks incredulously.  _Because one of you can intimidate a room full of generals all by yourselves._

_He has a point, Don,_ I say dryly.  _We should just ditch the boys and take over the universe._

_Good plan,_ she says immediately.

_No, wait, hey,_ Tony says over our amusement.

_You two should get back to campus,_ Donna points out.  _Act as normal as possible. Good luck._

_We’ll stay with you,_ I say firmly. Tony and I start making our way back.  _I mean it. We stick together from now on._

_No complaints here,_ she mutters, then lets the open connection fade back to a hum. I make sure to send her constant waves of reassurance, letting her know I’m here with her, and feel Tony do the same. Normally, Donna would make a fuss at the ‘coddling.’ The fact that she doesn’t proves how scared these last two years have made her. She probably thought she was hallucinating our voices or something.

_Not anymore,_ I think privately. _Not ever again, not with my family._ Our apartment building looms up ahead, Rhodey standing in front of it like a warden. I struggle to remember who I was when this all started, how to behave, and end up sliding into the skin of an alias. We were taught to blend in; I just never thought we’d be blending into our old home.


	3. 1986 (Lindsey)

When Lindsey reappears in his own time, there’s already three minds waiting to catch him. He can feel the weight of fresh scars, different from the minds he just left, but he doesn’t push. He lets himself sink back into their network, lets the others reassure themselves that he’s back and safe and _here._ He catches relief and fear and remembered pain from Donna, and too late remembers that she would have been alone for two years. He sends a burst of love and compassion and protectiveness to her, doesn’t care that she’s older than him by four years now, the four of them were the oldest in the facility and would be the oldest now. Even having the Starks back for the last two years didn’t fix everything; they wouldn’t be right until the others were all back on Earth.

Since Stiles wouldn’t be around since 2008, they might have to find a couple coping strategies.

_Yeah, blame it all on Stiles,_ Bella snickers.  _Or Tony. That’s the default in these situations, right?_

_Hey, we proved the time travel wasn’t my fault, remember?_ Tony protests.

_That time,_ Donna says dryly. Lindsey snickers and sets out towards the farmhouse he’d stayed in before―before.

God, he misses his real family. He wishes they all went back with Donna and just caught up to their own times the normal way.

_Yeah, well, we shouldn’t go changing our personal pasts,_ Bella says. There’s an agony hidden in her words; not so much for herself and Tony, for what little they can see coming for them, but for the other members of their family.  _Or cross our own timelines. We’ll do the best we can. There’s a reason the Initiative didn’t want us going anywhere near these two centuries. Or even learning about them, beyond what we could already see._

_You mean besides wanting to keep the brainwashing intact?_ Lindsey retorts.  _We still don’t know what triggered the collapse, right?_

_We’ll figure it out,_ Tony says.  _It’ll probably be something really obvious, too, so we can all blame each other for not seeing it sooner. Now go make nice with the normal people._

_Yes, dad,_ Lindsey snarks back. Bella and Donna administer what amounts to a mental slap on the back of the head before breaking into giggles. Tony gives him the mental equivalent of a middle finger and goes back to tinkering. The three of them are a steady, quiet hum at the back of his mind, and he’s comforted by the thought that no matter what else the universe takes from them, he will never let it take his family.


End file.
